LOS ANGELES — Josh Rosen had the hot tub, then the golf course, then the shoulder injury. Then just as his profile started to recede this summer, the quarterback took over headlines with comments about academics and athletics published in a Bleacher Report article.

He was attacked through radio waves, TV screens and social media posts for every misstep. Jim Mora defended him every time.

For that, Rosen is grateful.

“We all are forever indebted to him,” the junior said of his former head coach who was fired Sunday. “He has helped me grow up, mature, get closer to becoming a man. I mean, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and he’s always been by my side when I think a lot of people maybe wouldn’t, so it’s not just with me, it’s with everyone on the team. He’s an incredible person, an incredible coach and we’ll definitely miss him.”

Rosen was Mora’s biggest recruiting victory. The former five-star prospect was supposed to vault the Bruins to their first conference championship in nearly two decades after Mora had taken the team to back-to-back 10-win seasons. Instead, Rosen is a mediocre 16-13 as a starter.

“It’s just kind of disappointing because I feel like you come into a program that’s 10-2, 10-2 and 9-3 and you’re doing any- and everything that you can and you just can’t produce the wins that you want to,” Rosen said. “And it’s a bummer because I’m giving everything I have and then some. and to kind of come up on the short side of it time and time and time again is really disappointing.”

Rosen’s UCLA tenure has, so far, come up far short of the lofty expectations he brought to Westwood. The Bruins had the second-worst rushing attack last year as he suffered a season-ending shoulder injury. They have the second-worst rushing defense this year. Rosen is widely considered a top pick in this year’s draft if he chooses to declare early, but can barely lift his struggling team to bowl eligibility.

The Bruins (5-6, 3-5 Pac-12) need a victory over Cal at the Rose Bowl in Friday’s regular-season finale to reach the six-win threshold. Despite the shock of losing his coach, the program’s unstable future and constant questions about possibly declaring for the draft, Rosen said he’s focused solely on extending this season with a win Friday.

“I haven’t really talked to my family about that yet,” Rosen said of how UCLA’s future head coach will affect his draft decision. “That will come in the near future, but I mean, everything matters when it comes to a decision like that, so I’ll take up all the different sorts of variables into the equation, but not quite yet.”

The Manhattan Beach native struck up a close relationship with offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch this year. Fisch, the team’s interim head coach, reinvented UCLA’s offense in a season, turning the unit into one of the top passing attacks in the country with Rosen at the helm.

Fisch’s quick rebuild of the Bruin offense could be a good line on his resume to one day push the longtime assistant into a head coaching position. He already has the faith of his players.

“I think he absolutely deserves a shot here or anywhere,” Rosen said of Fisch. “He’s an awesome coach. I mean, his offense this year is incredibly productive and hopefully we can win this last two for him.”

Thuc Nhi Nguyen has covered UCLA for the Southern California News Group since 2016. A proud Seattle native, she majored in journalism and mathematics at the University of Washington. She likes graphs, animated GIFs and superheroes.